Multatuli

Career in Dutch East Indies

Natal, Sumatra

In 1838, he left on one of his father's ships for Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, where over the next two decades he held a series of colonial government posts. Initially employed in the general accounting department, he was promoted in the following years to administrative officer, although he disliked financial work.

In 1842, he was appointed comptroller of the troubled district of Natal, Noord Sumatra, Dutch East Indies (now part of Indonesia).

In 1843 a 13-year-old girl, Si Oepi Ketch, a member of a Sumatran noble family, was offered to Douwes Dekker. Douwes Dekker later described her as "one of my first loves". A lock of hair, which Douwes Dekker kept with him all his life, is still kept at the Multatuli Museum. Back then it was very common to match young native women with single Dutch civil servants.

Financial irregularities and a deficit in funds – at least some of which dated to before his time in office – led to a serious reprimand from the governor of Sumatra's west coastal region, General Andreas Victor Michiels, and to a temporary suspension. Aggrieved, he wrote a revenge play De Oneerbare (The Dishonorable Man), later published as De bruid daarboven (The Upstairs Bride). He would later include a version of this episode in his satirical novel Max Havelaar.

Although the general was later shown to have been in the wrong in the matter of the reprimand, Douwes Dekker himself acknowledged that he was not well suited to administrative work. He annoyed his colleagues not solely by his errors and delays but by not adhering to the unwritten rules of the local civil service. Eventually, after refunding the deficit out of his own pocket, he was put on temporary leave and then transferred elsewhere.

Menado, Ambon, and Lebak

After holding several subordinate government positions in Nanjing in Qing dynasty China and Purworedjo in Java under colonial rule (now part of Indonesia), Douwes Dekker was appointed secretary to the Resident of Menado in Noord-Celebes (now also part of Indonesia) in 1848. Here his career recovered, at least in part because the resident, Reinier Scherius, shared his strong sense of fair play towards the indigenous population. On his departure in 1851, Scherius recommended Douwes Dekker as his successor. The government decided otherwise; Multatuli had again amassed a deficit in the official funds and had also run up private debts, a situation that raised suspicions of financial irregularities but was never cleared up. Nonetheless, at the end of 1851 he was promoted up the administrative ladder, being sent to Ambon as Assistant Resident.

After a few months, he went on furlough to the Netherlands for health reasons. From 1852 to May 1855 he was in Holland, where he gambled extensively and accumulated more debt. Despite his later success as a writer, he would be pursued by creditors for most of his adult life.

In 1857 he was appointed Assistant Resident of Lebak, in the Bantam-Kidoel area of Java (now Banten province in Indonesia). By this time, however, he had begun to openly protest against the abuses of the Dutch colonial system and was threatened with dismissal. Instead, he resigned his appointment and returned to the Netherlands.

Writing career

Determined to expose the scandals he had witnessed during his years in the Dutch East Indies, Douwes Dekker began to write newspaper articles and pamphlets. Little notice was taken of these early publications until, in 1860, he published his satirical anticolonialist novel Max Havelaar: The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company under the pseudonym Multatuli. Douwes Dekker's pen name is derived from the Latin phrase multa tuli, meaning "I have suffered much" (or more literally: "I have borne much"). It refers both to himself and to the victims of the injustices he saw.

Douwes Dekker was accepted in 1854 at the Freemason loge "Concordia Vincit Animos". The head of this loge was W.J.C. van Hasselt. Multatuli sent his manuscript of Max Havelaar to Van Hasselt, and Van Hasselt sent this manuscript to another Freemason, Jacob van Lennep.

The very first text ever published by Multatuli was "Geloofsbelydenis" (Profession of Faith). It appeared in the Freemason periodical "De Dageraad" (The Dawn) in 1859. In 1865 it was reprinted in "Bloemlezing door Multatuli" by R.C. Meijer, a fellow Freemason in Amsterdam. Already in 1861 the book "Minnebrieven" (Love letters) was published at the same printer/bookseller. Many more books and editions of Dekker were published by R.C. Meijer.

Although Douwes Dekker's friend and fellow writer Jacob van Lennep had seen to it that identifiable place names were changed before publication, the book still caused enormous controversy. Apologists for colonialism accused Multatuli of exaggeration, and he was unsuccessfully pressured to withdraw the inflammatory book. Critics claimed it lacked literary merit; nonetheless, Max Havelaar was read all over Europe. The poet and critic Carel Vosmaer proved to be an ally, publishing a book (The Sower, 1874) praising Multatuli.

Multatuli continued to write prolifically. His misleadingly titled second book, Minnebrieven (Love Letters, 1861), is actually another mordant satire, this time in the form of a fictitious correspondence. The following year, he began to publish a wide range of miscellaneous writings in a series of uniform volumes called Ideën (Ideas), of which seven appeared between 1862 and 1877. His semi-autobiographical novel Woutertje Pieterse (Little Walter Pieterse) was first printed in the Ideas series.

Multatuli made several attempts to write for the stage. One of his plays, Vorstenschool (The School for Princes; published in 1872 in the fourth volume of Ideën), expresses his nonconformist views on politics, society, and religion. For fear of offending the Dutch king, he let three years elapse before the play was first staged. The premiere and subsequent tour were a great success, forming one of the highlights of Multatuli's career as a writer.

Multatuli stopped writing rather suddenly in 1877. He had moved to Germany about ten years earlier, where he settled in the town of Ingelheim am Rhein near Mainz.

Marriages

Multatuli married Everdine Hubertina van Wijnbergen on 10 April 1846. They had two children, their son Edu (born 1854) and their daughter Nonni (born 1857). Multatuli's relationship with Edu remained difficult throughout his life.

Multatuli eventually separated from his wife, in large part due to his gambling addiction and related financial problems. She died in 1874 and Multatuli not long afterwards married Maria Hamminck Schepel.

Legacy

Multatuli was one of Sigmund Freud's favorite writers; his name heads a list of 'ten good books' Freud drew up in 1907. Several other writers from different generations were appreciative of Multatuli, including Karl Marx, Anatole France, Willem Elsschot, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann as well as Johanna van Gogh, and many suffragists and suffragettes.

In June 2002, the Dutch Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (Society of Dutch Literature) proclaimed Multatuli the most important Dutch writer of all time.

The annual Multatuli Prize, a Dutch literary prize, is named in his honor. The literary award Woutertje Pieterse Prijs is named after the character Woutertje Pieterse in Multatuli's De geschiedenis van Woutertje Pieterse.

The Multatuli Museum is located in Amsterdam at Korsjespoortsteeg 20, where Eduard Douwes Dekker was born. Another Multatuli Museum was opened on 11 February 2018 in Rangkasbitung, Lebak Regency in the province of Banten, Indonesia. Multatuli was cremated in Gotha. His ashes were later brought to the cemetery and crematorium Westerveld in Driehuis. His wife Tine is buried in the Protestant section of the San Michele cemetery.

An Indonesian Navy command ship was named KRI Multatuli in honor of Eduard Douwes Dekker.